Summer Round Up and Rant

Swampy, sticky, sweaty, buggy, muggy summer days are here again. Thought I would blog on with some of the news from the homestead now that I'm on hiatus from the daily work grind.

Goats are doing well. My husband has been putting them out to graze most days, and I must say that I don't mind the poop in the yard if he can leave off firing up the lawn mower. The goats have gotten the drill down pat now and know what to do when they're on the tether or in the gi-normous "floating" pen Ed made from recycled aluminum and fencing. Cora is the most conscientious nibbler; she will eat most anything we put before her, and she's doing a swell job knocking down the shrubbery at the edges of the property. Dolly is a bit of a lazy bones. Oh, she'll eat for a while, but it's not long before I look out and see her complacently chewing the cud in the shade. Our two boys are growing up and look so cute on the end of the leash, leaping and frolicking when they're put out to graze in the morning. Ed continues to enjoy the animals and he doesn't seem to mind the physical labor involved in putting them out.

He is still looking for work. I haven't counted the applications we've completed together since he lost his job with the county last fall, but it's a bundle. He so enjoyed the temporary welding gig, and we keep hoping that something like it will come around. He faithfully checks listings every week and puts in applications, but he's only had one interview since fall.

One problem we are encountering in this area is the preponderance of nepotism and the hiring of former miliary. If someone in the boss's family is out of work, he or she is likely to get hired before a stranger, even a highly qualified one. At first we may have believed this trend to be one we imagined or maybe a sour grapes thing, but no. In speaking with my stepfather who worked in this area 40 years ago, he said things haven't changed. He experienced the same difficulty breaking into the job market here when I was a young lass. The other issue is the preference given to former military. Rah rah, sis, boom, bah. Yes, I support the troops, but why give a good job to a guy drawing military retirement when there's another qualified guy trying to support a family? It's been a struggle.

On to happier job news . . . it seems like my school district is going to offer professional services contracts to teachers with 3 and 4 years of experience in the district. Those of us in this boat found out about it in a strange way just before school ended; we were in on a conference call we weren't supposed to be in on and heard the news directly from the superintendent. This is a good thing because it means that if I stay with the school district I'm in, I won't have to work on annual contract again. I will have a modicum of job security I didn't have before. Also, and importantly, I won't be evaluated primarily on my students' standardized test scores.

Education and social services have suffered since our Republican governor took office and went in cahoots with the Republican-dominated Florida congress. I didn't vote for the guy. He was a shady business man who claimed he was going to solve all of Florida's problems by "running Florida like a business." Really. His own business was under investigation, and how far can you trust someone who paid $70 million out of his own pocket to essentially "buy" the office of governor?

A specific bone to pick would be the buy-in with President Obama's "Race to the Top" program that promises big money for education . . . if you're willing to spend countless more days testing students each year, if you offer dual enrollment and AP classes at every school (even tiny ones like mine with 41 kids in the senior class), and if you will make every kid in high school take classes like chemistry and calculus. Come on. Read Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great American School System and you'll understand Obama is no friend of education. Rather, he's taken on Bush's shameful NCLB failure and made no improvements, only added more testing (aka as "accountability"). Our only hope for change, it would seem, lies with teachers, parents and kids who are fed up with the craziness. The film Race to Nowhere should be shown by PTOs across the country. Most parents have no idea what is going on in their kids' classrooms.

I can see how some Republicans could support this culture of assessment. It may not be good for students, but it's good for business. Pearson, the company we bought our language textbooks from two years ago, is now the company that does everything to do with FCAT testing. They have online test prep sites districts pay to access. They have workbooks and other test prep materials districts buy. Pearson creates the FCAT and Pearson scores the FCAT. Boom times for testing companies, for sure. Evidently, "running education like a business" means lining the pockets of large corporations.

Our governor wants to do away with unions. That became obvious this spring when the legislature passed a bill that would base 50% of a teacher's pay on student test scores. You don't have to be an expert on the issue of education to realize that test scores are not a reliable and valid expression of a teacher's efficacy. They can't even measure what a student has learned from day to day. Student test performance depends on more than what happens in the classroom. Some kids come to class packing a lot of baggage.

A senior at our school this year passed every class, but could not pass the state standardized test, so he didn't graduate. He mastered the material in every class, but couldn't pass one test. This is a young man who suffers from test anxiety, but he doesn't have any special accommodations, so he doesn't get extra time when testing and he can't have math problems read to him. He didn't graduate because he didn't pass one test. How is this any kind of fair?

I don't believe that the union should be able to protect bad teachers. There's an out for that. It means that principals have to visit the classroom more than once a year for 10 minutes at a time. They have to observe and evaluate. They have to counsel the teacher and document what they've done. Principals can't do this now because they've been given too many other things to do such as pour over standardized test scores, schedule more tests, analyze data from tests, attend meetings about the latest tests. The system has turned school administrators into test bureaucrats who no longer have the time to visit classrooms, supervise teachers, counsel employees, and make necessary personnel changes. Until principals are given back the power and time to do the job they were hired to do, we will continue to have bad teachers in the classroom.

Not every teacher whose students have low test scores is a bad teacher. Some teachers are teaching the top students. How does a student who scores the highest score possible show improvement the next year? Some teachers are working with kids who are slower and take longer to learn concepts. Does that mean the teacher hasn't done everything in his or her power to bring the student up to speed? Some kids are just not good testers. They can verbally answer any question or draw or write an explanation, but they can't take multiple choice tests. Do you penalize the teacher?

Another more frightening reality may the kids that are masters of the standardized multiple choice test, but who can't do any critical, independent thinking. I experienced this with my seventh grade students this year, kids who have been raised on FCAT and who struggled all year to write a cohesive paragraph with a topic sentence and supporting details. Instead, I got a sentence, two if the kid was really inspired. How will America ever catch up with the rest of the world when our education leaves out critical thinking, exploration, hands on learning, and rigorous expectations?

So, it looks like my principal will recommend me for professional services contract. That's a load off my mind, but it doesn't salve my feelings for the new teachers at our school like our fine, creative, enthusiastic art teacher who may never move past annual contract. I don't know how she will be evaluated since there isn't a standardized test for art, and test scores will count for 50% of her evaluation starting next year. Obviously, someone didn't think all this through. As if her job isn't hard enough. Try teaching art at a K-12 school.

This year at school we've all gritted our teeth and held on. I keep thinking that the pendulum has to swing the other way. We've gone as far as we can with this crazy testing culture and with "running education like a business." We've been on this track for 30 years or so. It's got to be time to look at the wreckage and turn this train around.